


Butterfly

by Papaveri



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Kakusei | Fire Emblem: Awakening
Genre: F/F, Post-Canon, sacrifice ending, slight body horror
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-03
Updated: 2016-07-03
Packaged: 2018-07-19 22:12:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,480
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7379476
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Papaveri/pseuds/Papaveri
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the war, Sumia keeps a garden.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Butterfly

“I don't want you to do it.”

Sumia, like everyone else, sleeps with shoes on and still wearing the lightest parts of her armor, just in case – after a while, they stopped being uncomfortable, but tonight the way her legs go so readily into her boots, the way the creamy color of her flesh gives into the stark fabric of her uniform unsettles Robin.

_I don't want to do it either_ .

“I can't just… Even if I wouldn't be there to see it, I can't leave the problem for someone from a thousand years in the future, can I?”

Robin puts on her coat and shifts her weight from one leg to the other. Although she's not there (she sleeps, when she does it, in a tent a bit apart from the main camp. 'Just in case', but Robin figured it gives her room to think, and it must be nice, enjoying that), Robin feels as if she can catch a glimpse of Lucina while she speaks. Sumia averts her gaze.

“You don't trust them?”

“I don't know them.”

(The scales, feathers that are growing from the soft parts of her prickle her skin where her clothes sit a bit tighter, and she wants to take the coat off again. Sumia has already seen – Sumia is used, to feathers, to flying creatures deciding to walk on earth for a while. When the moon grows full, Robin's whole body pulsates and her blood bubbles and waves like a fire, but tonight the sky is dark and cloudy and she's thankful for the small mercies, for the feeble light that hides the way her eyes have turned yellow and oddly bright.)

“I'm sorry I have to be the chosen one”, she says. “I'm not old enough to be the wise sage who seals the dragon, I think.”

Sumia hugs her and her arms press against the feathers, against the scales.

“I wish you were.”

It's a whisper that doesn't carry the ring of her voice.

 

***

 

A stray arrow rips her hairpin from her hair; Sumia, focused on the single silhouette at the nape of the neck of the dragon (undulating like the sea under a storm, trembling like mountains tremble during earthquakes, twisting like a tornado, breathing, breathing), switches her attention to the small blade grazing her scalp and tries to catch the pieces of her hairpin.

And it's a second but she doesn't see it. She feels it.

A gust of wind makes her take hold of the reigns of her pegasus harder than ever and then, then, an otherwordly scream rips through the air, she says, she says,

“Don't do it, what am I going to do without you?”

and maybe that roar like the earth breaking up and opening to swallow them muffles her words, but she hears, like a bell, bright and cutting, she hears,

 

“I promise you I'll be back. The way you love me, I promise you I'll be back.”

 

Cordelia calls out to her, and Sumia flies away. She remembers the voice of Naga, glittering with hope, saying that maybe they've tied Robin to life, with their shared stories, with their friendships and kisses.

She thinks of all the unlikely happy endings in her books (of the triumphant returns after the war, of the heroes of legend) but when she touches the ground, her legs give out and she cries on her knees.

 

***

 

There's a part of Chrom that still fumbles under the crown, bustling and confused, even if his back is much more straight now, and there are shy creases around his eyes. He's too young to have them, Sumia thinks.

(Chrom has two children. A little girl that's just starting to understand her legs and carries herself with a calming awkwardness, and a little boy that opens his mouth only when he's on his mother's arms. Is he too young to have them, Sumia wonders)

“Cordelia will be better at handling the troops, in any case,” says Sumia. Cordelia's eyes welled up when she saw the young recruits, fewer than there used to be when they first started. _This is what I want to do, Sumia_ , she said, clutching her hand. “I can help in a different way!”

Yet there's a part of her that grips on the spear with the strength of a dragon ( _with the strength of a dragon_ , she remembers, is something she read from a book she shared with Robin. It comes to her mind when she realizes the roughness of the shaft against her palms, now naked). 

“I just hope we won't need much help from now on. At least on that front.” 

Chrom takes the weapon from her, and Sumia doesn't know if he notices the last bit of resistance left in her. There's the weird, almost nostalgic ringing about her arms, like when she took her armor off the first time after a battle.

The ringing stops when she opens the fence of her new garden.

 

***

 

“Can I have my fortune?”

Robin asked with her head still on the pillow; Sumia saw her eyes, mottled brown, behind unruly strands of white hair. All in all, a bit of a blessing, since she was a bit embarrassed.

(Robin had tiny scars on her hands, on her shoulders. She had a big one on her leg, _from a fallen mercenary I didn't see moving_ , and another on her midriff, _from an arrow fired very close to me_. Robin told Sumia she got in its way because it was meant for her, and it was a lie small and bright like a primrose blossom.)

“It's… probably past midnight, Robin.” It was a sudden realization. Sumia laughed with a hint of something like sleepiness, something like calm, even in war barracks. “I don't think I can find you flowers now.”

“We should get a place with a garden, once this is over. I've never had a garden, but it can't be that hard, right? And you love flowers!”

“Oh, but I don't know nothing about them!”

Robin shifted a bit under the covers, and a bit after that Sumia realized she was looking for her clothes. It was a bit distracting, at the moment, to have her back all bared, orange and yellow under the candlelight.

“It's okay, we'll manage. If I got this far on intuition, I can guess how to raise plants. Oh, Sumia, I was only joking, don't make such a face!”

(The feathers, the scars, they started growing on the back of her head, and slowly bled down her back, on spots on her arms and legs. At first, Sumia tried to kiss them away, and they were hard and dusty on her tongue.)

 

***

 

The first year it goes badly: the plants wilt under the heaviest rain Sumia has ever seen, drowned in mud and cold water. She ties her hair high up, and as hard as she works on the land, nothing seems to survive such a harsh spring.

The second year they take root.

(She asked Lissa and she asked Miriel and she asked Cordelia, and she got looks of befuddlement and light head tilts, with fingers over lips, and answers quick and unsteady as first shots.)

She plants flowers with lots of petals, because they give more opportunities, and because they hide the answer for her questions in her numbers.

She thinks, no matter the number, _I love her I love her I love her._

And she keeps three pegasi – their neighs remind her both of the war and of when she met Cordelia. She doesn't give them names because she also remembers the feeling of naming her mount.

 

***

 

It's hard, to manage a garden and animals at the same time – some days, when Sumia forgets to lock the pegasi properly, they escape and bite on the tender flowers, on the youngest sprouts, and she has to convince them back into the stables.

(She remembers Henry, who spoke to animals, and Maribelle who always kept, who still keeps, a step away from even the tamest of them. _I only ever trusted mine, you see_ , she tells her, the first time she visits her. _With hair as fair as mine, you have to be careful, dear_.

She remembers Sully who would have taken them back by the reigns, with words quick and harsh and playful.)

 

One day, the pegasi don't answer the first time she calls them and Sumia has to go find them – she only hopes they haven't got to the flowers she keeps almost hidden, beautiful but poisonous, even though they have always kept away from them.

She finds them surrounding a figure.

 

***

 

Sumia has cut her hair short, but it curls around her face like a caress.

“See? I told you you could manage.”

She pulls her into an embrace, and Robin watches the white feathers that have fallen around them.

**Author's Note:**

> Well! Here it is! A happy ending!!
> 
> This is extremely corny and self-indulgent, but I'm glad my corny and self-indulgent has brightened up and managed to form around something like a plot, even. I had to follow my vignette structure (be forgiving!), but I almost got to 2000 words too!
> 
> But anyway, I got through a kinda rough phase with my writing recently and I deleted a bunch of stuff I had ended up hating, so jokes aside I'm pretty happy with this :'> I hope you enjoyed it too!
> 
> As always, thanks for reading ❤


End file.
